


In This World, Alone

by circusgymgirl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24658240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circusgymgirl/pseuds/circusgymgirl
Summary: A girl in a lighthouse with her twin sister.





	In This World, Alone

The wind is sharp, stinging her eyes simply because it can. Horrible things happen simply because they do. People die because there was nothing keeping them here, not really. She refuses to believe them when they say everything happens for a reason. There was no reason for this, no reason for anything else that had happened to her. Nothing ever meant something, there were no omens. There was just this. The biting cold wind to accompany the reality that was just as bland and gray. 

* * *

“Look at us,” her mother said, her smile tight and forced. “Getting out into nature together. Like a real family.”

_ Like a real family _ . It was the mantra her mom had adopted, she said it at every dinner they sat down to as if that was what made them a family as opposed to shared loss, blood, sweat, and tears. Like it was not the years of memories that tied them together but the fact that all favored oatmeal for breakfast and hated running. 

“Coming?” She turned toward her sisters voice, the wind whipping her hair this way and that so that she still couldn’t see her sister. She took a couple of steps toward the voice anyway. Because that was the way she was wired. To respond to her sister, to go to her sister, to be there for her sister. Her whole life built around the life of another person. Maybe that was dangerous. Maybe that was a surefire way to get your heart broken. But it was also a surefire way to love another person, to trust another person to be wanted and needed and to want and need someone. It was companionship, and love, and humanity. 

A hand on her cheek caused her to jump. The laugh that followed was more familiar than just about anything. The laugh that was as dependable as the person it belonged to.

“Come on.” She pulled her hair back into some sort of knot at the back of her head, hoped it would stay and took off after her sister. 

By the time she and her sister reached the lighthouse door, she was sweating under her layers. Her sister, by comparison, was still shivering. She shrugged off her jacket and handed it to her sister without a moment's hesitation. Her sister slid it on over her skimpy layers. A few winters before, her sister had started insisting that she didn’t need more than that. She knew otherwise and had been adding an extra coat to her layers for years now. 

“Are you girls going to climb to the top of the lighthouse?” Her mother asked. She looked at her sister for confirmation, even though that’s what they did each time. 

The moment they stepped inside, the atmosphere changed. Outside, there was an air of foreboding, a warning. An otherworldliness that could’ve mistakenly produced fear in the wrong person. Inside, however, it felt familiar, like an old glove. Worn in all the right places, the spiral staircase too close to falling apart at certain spots to be safe, but it felt safe nonetheless. It wasn’t warm, but the hours they’d spent there, the laughter shared, colored the place and made it seem more inviting than it probably actually was. 

“Race you,” he sister cried gleefully, and took off without a moment’s hesitation. She took it more carefully, starting out more slowly and gaining speed as she went up.

By the time she reached the first landing, her sister was already there, waiting patiently for her. A tired smile crossed her face and she said, “slowpoke.” She jabbed her finger into her sister's arm as she joined her.

They started up the stairs together, their voices fading in out, overlapping and occasionally giving way to laughter that bounced around the space, filling it with love and life. The abandoned lighthouse didn’t have much of its own life left. 

It took them thirty-two minutes to reach the top of the lighthouse. The stepped out onto the platform together. The railing was far too low and it was beyond dangerous for them to be up there. They didn’t care. Her sister, especially, never had. 

Her sister smiled, looking out over the ocean. It was choppy, filled with churning black areas, the waves crashing onto the rocks with more force than necessary. 

Her sister turned to look at her, her face alights with joy as she looked out on the scene, gray and uninviting as it was. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she replied, mildly confused. The proclamation wasn’t taboo, but it was relatively uncommon between the two of them. It was unspoken but always present. 

And then, as suddenly as between one breath and the next, her sister was gone. 

Her sister didn’t scream on the way down, but as soon as she reacted, she did. The word tore out of her throat, a feral, unrecognizable sound. “Dylan!”

* * *

She remembered the biting cold and not much else afterward. She remembered feeling as if the world was crushing her, drowning her in fear as her sister was drowning in the ocean. Her sister was dead when she hit the water, and somewhere in her, some part of her knew that. Before the autopsy reports and unbroken people telling what had happened, she knew. Knew in a way you know when you are suddenly all alone. 

Today, she screams the questions at the water, at the lighthouse she used to love. She screams three questions. And one more.

“What would happen if there was only one of us? If we’d been separated, two halves of a whole and only one of us had come into existence? What if we were alone?” And, finally, “why?”


End file.
